A Dog Named Jake
by LisaT
Summary: On New Caprica, Laura and Bill encounter a certain mutt... Complete.


_This popped into my head after watching the deleted scenes from Season One. If you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about. This piece started off as funny fluff, but somehow morphed. All feedback welcome - and if you read, please do leave some feedback!_

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A Dog Named Jake**_

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"No! Down. _Down_, I say!"

Laura Roslin looked up from the pile of essays she was correcting, and her eyebrows went up. That was Bill Adama, she knew, but who was he talking to?

"Sit!" Bill ordered, starting to sound a little desperate. "Dammit, don't you understand Colonial Standard? SIT!"

Laura's smile broadened into a grin and she sidled across her tent to flip the so-called door back. As she had expected, Bill was trying to communicate with a medium-sized bundle of black and white fluff.

"Mutiny in the ranks, Admiral?"

"It won't do what I say," Bill grumbled, not even bothering to say 'hello'. He eyed the dog balefully. "Hasn't anyone trained it? Where'd it come from, anyway?"

Laura lifted one shoulder in answer and indicated that Bill could enter. He did so, still complaining under his breath. The dog tried to follow, but Laura pinned it with her glare and said, "No!" very firmly. The dog looked at her reproachfully, but stayed where he was, just outside the tent.

When she turned back to Bill, he was staring open-mouthed. "How'd you do that?"

She gave him her most condescending smile. "My dear Bill, I am a teacher. Children and dogs, they operate on very similar principles. Firmness works better than bellowing any day."

Bill looked a little sheepish. "Yeah? On quorums and grumpy old admirals too?"

She took off her glasses and quirked a smile at him. "Those, too. All the people who made fun of the idea of a schoolteacher turned president … they really didn't know what they were talking about. I'd like to see one of them handle a class of five-to-fifteen year olds at half past two in the afternoon."

She wasn't certain, given the dim light in the tent, but she was thought that Bill paled a little. Taking pity on him, she poured New Caprican Moonshine into a chipped homemade clay mug and handed it to him. "Here."

He took a couple of gulps, wiped his mouth, and smiled. "I suppose I owe you an apology then, for –uh – a comment you may have heard."

Laura managed to keep a straight face. "'Taking orders from a frakking schoolteacher', h'mm? That the one?"

He grunted and she laughed. "Oh, Bill, it was clear from the moment I met you that you knew nothing about teachers – or kids."

Bill grinned, but the grin quickly faded to something that might have been sadness. "No, you're right about that, the gods know. I wasn't much of a father to my boys, that's for sure. Spacefaring doesn't leave much time for it, you know."

She put a hand on his arm as she sat beside him on the bed. "I know. At least you're making up for it now with Lee and Kara."

He put his hand over hers and squeezed. "So where did the mutt come from?"

She shrugged again and took a sip from her own mug. As they both had cause to remember, it was potent, even without the addition of the herb. "I've seen him around. He must have come down with one of the colonists. Some of the civilian ships did have animals on board when the Cylons attacked, and those border collies were valuable on agrarian worlds like Arelon. I don't think he's full grown yet."

"Someone should train him," Bill repeated. "He seems sharp enough."

Laura gave him a sly smile. "Even if he didn't understand Colonial Standard?"

"He understood your 'no' perfectly fine," he countered. "That's more than some kids."

Laura sighed and laughed. "How well I know it. OK, then." She rose and went to the door flap, hunkering down so that her heavy skirt pooled on the dirt. "C'mon, boy, c'mon. It's OK."

The dog, now nearly two metres away, lifted his head from his paws and cocked it at her.

She extended her hand. He was not shy, she knew. If he was wary now it was because he hadn't forgotten her earlier scolding, and this breed was often accounted the cleverest of all.

"Come on," she urged again. "I won't tell you off this time."

He got to his feet and looked at her, tail wagging cautiously from side to side, half-grown feathers straggling in the breeze.

She clicked her tongue behind her teeth and the sound seemed to reassure him. In two bounds he was at her side, his tail whumping on her skirt. She twitched back the tent flap and encouraged him in.

Bill grinned as they entered. "You got him then."

"He's not that stupid," she told him primly. "He knows what's good for him."

Bill's eyes glinted in amusement as she took her place next to him once again. "What now?"

"Didn't you ever have a dog?"

Laura saw something that might have been the shadow of an old regret cross Bill's face. "Nah. After my mother and sister were killed, it was all my dad and grandmother could do to keep up with me, and I enlisted as early as I could. My own sons went through a phase of wanting a dog, but Carolanne refused point-blank. I wouldn't be there and she knew she'd end up caring for it. You?"

Laura let her fingers caress the dog's smooth head as she answered. "Sandra and I didn't, though we begged for one. When Cheryl was seven, my parents got her a mongrel from the shelter. They said we'd had each other, but Cheryl had no-one." She stared unseeingly into the past for a moment, remembering a last party, laughter, mess, empty wine bottles – and the cold knock on the door at six o'clock in the morning.

"Laura?"

She roused herself with shake, her fingers still on the black-and-white muzzle that rested on her knee. "Sandra and Cheryl were my sisters," she explained softly. "Sandra was only a few years younger than I, but I was almost seventeen when Cheryl was born. Our mother died from breast cancer when I was twenty-five – less than a year after Cheryl got the frakking dog. Guess who had to look after it?" Her laugh was tinged with a rueful mixture of amusement and affection and grief.

For a brief moment, he put his arm about her shoulders, and for an equally brief moment, she relaxed against him, just as she'd done after the ground-breaking ceremony. She could allow herself this small comfort at least, and tears were very near.

The dog seemed to sense her pain, and gave a soft whine.

Laura forced herself to move away from Bill, to take the weight of her own grief and worries once again. Gods knew he had enough of his own to trouble him. "So, how shall we start training, Admiral?"

His teeth glinted in the dim light as he smiled. "Shouldn't we start at the beginning? What's his name?"

Laura blinked. "I don't think he has one."

"Let's give him one."

She nodded. That was a good idea. A name … She bit her lip as snatches of conversation floated through her memory. _Big shaggy thing… took twenty pills a day… Oh, Billy_. "Jake," she said with decision. "His name is Jake."

~fin.


End file.
